(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,  2007) 256 pp. $11.20)

It’s my favorite first line in all the novels I’ve ever read. “Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”

There. Now you will have to stay up all night and read the whole thing.

St. Dominic did not “create” the Rosary.  He died in 1221, and the earliest recorded rosary similar to what we know today was dated in the 1300s. It is possible that he taught people to recite the first half of the Hail Mary. St. Peter Damian (1007 – 1072) told the story of a priest with only one virtue – saying that Angelic Salutation daily. (Luke 1:42a)

Kristen: Tell me about your childhood.
Zoë: I’m the oldest of ten but I grew up as the oldest of nine, because number ten came along when I was 24. I was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, then moved to New England for seven or eight years and then moved back. Most of my childhood memories are Nova Scotia – based.
 
Kristen: Did you enjoy being the oldest?
Zoë: I had a positive experience. My mother made sure I was not overburdened. I had my moody teenage years when I was trying to do my teenage things. I have a lot of traits of a typical oldest child, including being maternal and nurturing. I didn’t end up marrying until very late in my life and I don’t have any children yet – and that has been a big surprise.

(Click on Zoe's picture to learn more about life coaching, or click "Read more" to see the rest of our interview.)

“You’ve come a long way, baby.”

If you’re old enough to remember this was a cigarette slogan, you know a lot has changed in forty years.
But, according to some, not enough has changed in the Catholic Church. They point to the work of Pope John Paul II suspiciously. He did not advocate ordaining women, nor did he re-jigger a single word of Humanae Vitae. Is it possible to promote the dignity of women without those changes?

In 1988, twenty years after Humanae Vitae upheld the Church’s prohibition on artificial contraception, Pope John Paul II wrote this little encyclical, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women.” (Mulieris Dignitatem) He had been thinking and writing about married sexuality since at least the early 1940’s. We can assume he understood the depth of antipathy out there on the subject. Maybe that’s why he didn’t mention Humanae Vitae in this encyclical.